Jazz singer Sarah Vaughan dies

Sarah Vaughan in Sydney in 1973. Photo by Harry Monty, courtesy Jazz Journal

HIDDEN HILLS, Calif. -- Sarah Vaughan, a legendary entertainer whose unique vocal artistry over a half-century career changed the art of jazz singing, died of lung cancer at age 66.

'The most God-given voice has just went away,' said singer Tony Bennett, currently on tour in England.

Vaughan died at 9:20 p.m. Tuesday at her home in the exclusive community of Hidden Hills in the San Fernando Valley northwest of Los Angeles, said Los Angeles Times jazz critic Leonard Feather, who said he has known Vaughan her entire professional life.

'I feel lucky to have had the chance to share this world with Sarah,' said trumpeter Miles Davis. 'She advanced her musical artistry to the point where she was more concerned with the texture of sound, the surfaces of sounds, the joy of sound. Her music was in a place where nobody had ever been.'

Drummer Roy Haynes, who worked in Vaughan's trio from 1953-58, said she was like family to him. 'Playing with her was like playing with Lester Young and Charlie Parker. It had that kind of excitement for me,' Haynes said.

'I'm very devastated that she is gone,' said jazz singer Helen Merrill. 'Sarah was the greatest jazz singer that the world of music ever produced. I liked her range and her enormous daring. She was the epitome of what a musicianly singer is. She was blessed with an instrument that allowed her to convey all of her musical thoughts.'

Vaughan's manager, Harold Levy, said, 'She was a great artist. She was a wonderful family lady. She was a very special person who maintained some of the innocence of her early years. This was a warm and wonderful human being.'

Vaughan, who got her break at 16 at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, was nicknamed 'Sassy' for her onstage demeanor and 'The Divine One' for her voice.

What she did with her voice, a dark contralto made huskier through the years from smoking, made it made it easy for listeners to exaggerate her range.

'They say four octaves but it's not true. Two octaves and a fifth maybe,' Vaughan said in a 1986 interview. 'Maybe a little more.'

She darted and swooped up and down the register, embellishing on the way. Her lower register richened and deepened over the years but her falseto remained effortless and pure.

She was a popular performer -- in jazz clubs, at jazz festivals worldwide, and with symphonies, where her material favored George Gershwin.

Her style was tied closely to the improvisational ideas of the bop and post-bop musicians she played with early in her career. She sometimes forgot lyrics because she was thinking of the notes and the phrasings, like a horn player.

She was a stickler for the right tempo on each song and reworked and built on melodies. Her voice would jump an octave, then slide smoothly back down.

In spite of her decades as a performer, she was always nervous before going on stage, wringing her hands and mopping her brow in the wings and on stage.

Vaughan was born March 27, 1924, into a musical family in Newark, N.J. Her father, Asbury, was a carpenter who played guitar and sang folk songs. Sarah joined her mother, Ada, in the church choir and continued her education in piano and voice at a high school for the arts.

At age 16 she entered an amateur show at the Apollo. She sang 'Body and Soul' in such a way that stunned singers Billy Eckstine and Ella Fitzgerald, who were in the audience.

Before the day was out, Fitzgerald warned her about agents and managers and Eckstine recommended that Earl 'Fatha' Hines hire her. She joined as vocalist and second pianist and when the Hines band broke up a year later, Eckstine formed his own band, hiring Vaughan as his co-vocalist.

Vaughan, recorded her share of jazz classics, including 'Don't Blame Me' and 'I Cover The Waterfront.' Her first hit, 'It's Magic,' sold more than 2 million records.

Her most popular songs, staples of her 1980s concert repertoire, included 'Misty,' 'Perdido' and 'Send In the Clowns,' which served as her usual concert-closing encore.

Though she won countless awards over the years as best jazz vocalist, Vaughan said she believed there was no such thing as a jazz singer.

'That's a title. They give us all titles,' she said. 'They've got so many titles I don't know which music is which. People tend to categorize. I just sing. I sing whatever I can.'

In 1985, Vaughan was featured on the album 'The Planet is Alive ... Let It Live!' Its foundation was six poems written by Pope John Paul II when he was a young Polish priest named Karol Wojtyla.

In 1986, she joined opera diva Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, Jose Carreras and Mandy Patinkin in a studio recording of Rodgers and Hammerstein's 'South Pacific,' in which she sang the role of Bloody Mary.

In her later years, Vaughan remained fussy about her repertoire. Her most recent top-selling recording was a Latin album, 'Brazilian Romances,' recorded in 1987.

Vaughan married trumpeter George Treadwell in 1946. During their 10-year marriage, he served as her manager. Her marriage to former pro football player Clyde Atkins ended in 1966. In 1971, Vaughan married Las Vegas restaurateur Marshall Fisher, divorcing him in 1977. Her fourth marriage, in 1978, to musician Waymon Reed, was her briefest.

Vaughan is survived by her mother and an adopted daughter, Deborah.

First published at United Press International (UPI), April 4, 1990